Pakistan vs Pakistan

The needless death of 79-year-old Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti is a multiple tragedy - for his family, Balochistan and Pakistan.

The needless death of 79-year-old Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti is a multiple tragedy - for his family, Balochistan and Pakistan. While the aged leader died as he would have undoubtedly wished - a warrior at the head of his tribe - the manner of his death speaks volumes of the values with which Pakistan is governed. India, too, has many separatist insurgencies and terrorist movements. But in recent decades, there have been no instances where air power and artillery have been employed against them, even in very trying circumstances in Jammu and Kashmir. The chosen method is, instead, police action plus negotiation. The reason for this is both pragmatic and humane: military solutions don't work and they always carry the danger of horrific collateral damage. Islamabad, obviously, is not deterred by such concerns. After all, General Pervez Musharraf signalled his strategy in January 2005 when he declared that the Balochis will be struck by special weapons and "will not know what has happened to them".

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Pakistan likes to claim that India annexed Kashmir by 'force and fraud'. Yet, it employed those very means to seize Balochistan in April 1948 when its army forced the Khan of Kalat, the largest princely state in British Balochistan, to sign the instrument of accession. At the time of Independence in August 1947, Pakistani leaders like Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan repeatedly asserted that princely states had the unfettered right to do what they wished - join India or Pakistan, or remain independent. Neither were too bothered about the religious affiliation of the people of the states, or else they would not have accepted the aborted accession of Junagadh, or tried to entice the Maharaja of Jodhpur to sign up with Pakistan.

The Baloch resistance to their forced annexation has never ceased despite the Pakistan army's brutal repression going back to the Seventies. Pakistan has never been able to overcome the Balochi feeling that their rich natural resources are being exploited for the benefit of the Punjab-dominated government in Islamabad. There is no victory in brutally suppressing your own people and so it is up to the Musharraf government to convince the Balochis that they are an equal constituent of the Pakistani State. But expecting a military government to do so is perhaps asking for too much.